An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor Page B

stallion. I could fill a lake for a whale.”
    “I’m delighted,” Barry said, now openly laughing. “Now, what’s the bother today? Kinky said it was your finger.”
    “My thumb.” Kieran held out the offending digit. “Herself wanted a hook driven for to hang some Christmas decorations. Would you look at that?” He stuck his left thumb under Barry’s nose.
    Barry could see purple discolouration of at least half of the nail bed.
    “I hit it a right dunder with the hammer, so I did.”
    “I can see that.” Barry held the thumb gently and inspected it. The joints were knobby with the arthritis of age, but they did not seem to be displaced. “Can you bend it, Kieran?” He did without great difficulty. “I don’t think any bones are broken,” Barry said.
    “That’s a mercy . . . but it’s throbbing away like a Lambeg drum, so it is.”
    “It’s the blood under the nail. It’s a huge bruise, Kieran. I’ll let it out for you, and it’ll feel much better.” He turned to Ethel. “Have you a soup plate?”
    “Aye.” She left the kettle on the stove and went to a cupboard.
    While Ethel was fetching the plate, Barry opened his bag and took out a bottle of Dettol disinfectant, some cotton swabs, a prepacked sterile scalpel, and a roll of Sellotape.
    “Can I wash my hands in the sink?”
    “Aye, certainly,” Kieran said, eyeing the scalpel blade, which was clearly visible through the transparent packaging.
    Barry washed his hands and shook most of the water off. He didn’t bother drying them. He didn’t need dry hands, and he didn’t want to waste the prewrapped sterile towel in the bag.
    “Can you give me a wee hand, Ethel?”
    “Yes, sir, and here’s your nice clean soup plate,” she said, crossing the linoleum-covered floor.
    “Just set it on the table beside Kieran.” Barry noticed how the plate’s glaze glistened in the rays from the single overhead sixty-watt bulb. When Ethel said “clean,” she meant thoroughly scrubbed. Her housing might be verging on being a slum, but it would not stop Ethel O’Hagan being a tidy housekeeper. “Kieran, hold your hand over thebowl, and Ethel, unscrew the top of that bottle . . .” He nodded to indicate the Dettol. “Now pour some over Kieran’s thumb.”
    She did, and Barry’s eyes were stung by the strong fumes of the disinfectant. “Right, Ethel, one last job. Can you open the package the scalpel’s in?”
    She looked puzzled.
    “Take each side between your one finger and thumb, and pull.”
    She followed his instructions, and Barry had no difficulty removing the surgical knife. “Now, Kieran,” he said, “I’m going to cut a wee window in the nail.” Before Kieran could object, Barry seized the thumb in the ring of his own left thumb and index finger and used the pointed scalpel blade to cut a small rectangle in the nail over the bruise. In a second the piece of now free nail was lifted and dropped in the bowl, and the dark old blood beneath welled up and dripped over the side of Kieran’s thumb.
    Kieran whistled, then said, “Boys-a-boys, that’s powerful. The throbbing’s stopped already.”
    “It’s because the pressure’s been relieved.”
    “Just like a safety valve on an engine,” Kieran said wide-eyed, and whistled on the intake of breath. “Modern science is a wonderful . . . a wonderful . . . thing.”
    “Hold your thumb there.” Barry wrapped it in a cotton swab and used the adhesive Sellotape to bind the swab in place. “A week or so and it’ll be good as gold . . . but you’ll probably eventually lose the nail, and it’ll be a while before a new one grows back.”
    “Och, well,” said Kieran, “sure I’ll just ask Santa for a new one for Christmas.” And he laughed.
    “I’ll wash the soup plate,” Ethel said, as the kettle started to whistle on the stove. “Are you sure, Doctor, you’ll not have a wee cup?”
    Barry shook his head. “I’ll just wash my hands again and be running along. I’ve